


when you sleep, i dream

by deadchemistry



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Canon Hux has blue eyes, Dreams, Dreamsharing, Eventual Smut, M/M, Poor Dopheld Mitaka, Post-Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Simultaneous Re-imagined Star Wars: The Last Jedi, Sleep Deprivation
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-11-30
Updated: 2018-12-01
Packaged: 2019-09-02 13:10:59
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 4,142
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16787602
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deadchemistry/pseuds/deadchemistry
Summary: At Ren’s insistence, Hux finally gets some sleep. He doesn’t like what he sees, until he does.





	1. Chapter 1

Hux doesn’t sleep. He doesn’t need to. Not with the order of an entire galaxy seemingly resting in his gloved hands. If he balls them tight, nothing will fall away. To maintain this order, the million things on a Star Destroyer that need tending to, he does what he must – two eyes open all the time, and when he does fall into a sort of sleep state brought on by extreme exhaustion, it is with one eye open. Fitful. Dreamless. Short bursts of unconsciousness tainted with tasks and signatures and one more thing to be added to the list of things to do when he arrives on the bridge the next cycle. You couldn’t call it sleep, really. It’s more exhausting than being awake.

Ren sleeps so often that sometimes he’s not entirely sure which realm he’s in. He _feels_ his boots solid on the durasteel, his lightsaber annihilating training droids with autonomic motions, sweat sticking to his black hair, accompanied by the lull of The Force. This satisfying, quiet current reverberates to his toes, and sometimes it’s a deafening roar that brings him to his knees. All universes accessible – all gates open. And all the while, he is asleep. He becomes present in rooms like someone has flipped a switch. Sometimes it’s with his fists balled up in his sheets and sometimes it’s in the hallway of the Finalizer, when he is jolted into full awareness by what he imagines is the most annoying sound in the galaxy - General Hux’s boots stalking behind him, looking for a fight. _This asshole should really get some sleep,_ Ren almost always thinks.  


“Ren.”

On this particular day, he has just returned from a mission with his Knights. The sweat is irritating the scar on his face. He wants to remove his mask, but will wait until he reaches his quarters. His robes are still clinging to him, wet with the blood of a several dozen Drovians. _Stars_ , Ren thinks, _can I get a kriffing shower in without this guy up my ass first?_

“Ren,” Hux repeats, as he catches up and steps in front of him in the hallway. 

“I assume you’ll be reporting to Supreme Leader Snoke immediately to update him on our progress on Nim Drovis.” He takes a dramatic step back, the wetness and smell emanating from Ren’s layers of robes making his eyes water.

“Kriff, Ren!” Hux barks, “Did you slaughter the entire species? This visit was supposed to be a diplomatic one. Must you always let your temper tantrums overtake your judgement?”

A tiny, shining blob of spittle rests in the corner of the General’s mouth. Ren would like to smack it directly off his face, but he is suddenly taken aback by the state of it. Hux looks _awful_. They’ve both seen each other debatably at their worst. Ren being rescued in the snow from Starkiller Base, his face and torso bleeding into the rupturing groundswell after being beaten by the scavenger. Hux’s bottom lip broken open, eye swelled shut after Snoke had physically reprimanded him on the bridge in front of the crew for letting that kriffing pilot distract him. Both times, their pride had suffered more than their flesh. The outside didn’t matter so much; it was the crushing of their spirits that had really hurt. But this… this was hard to see for some reason.

Ren remains silent as he looks through his mask at the General’s bloodshot eyes. He feels the deep hollow of Hux’s senses, robbed of their sharpness. A void that has been replaced by the incessant scratching of fingers in his mind. _I will stay awake, I will…_  
“Are you listening to me?” Hux shrieks, getting close into Ren’s face, his eyes narrowing. “Have you gone completely mad under that ridiculous mask?” Ren exhales in a loud burst. It’s not what Hux has said, it’s that his face is so very pale, Ren can see the movement of the blood in his veins. He is mottled pink and red in places, not from Snoke’s hand, but from his body’s own inflammatory response. The deep chasms under his cheekbones and under his eyes seem endless, like they will give way to utter blackness and crumble in on themselves in another moment. Absolutely skeletal, Ren thinks. Although Ren has, in the past few hours, felt the dying of sentient bodies under his own hand, he _feels_ Hux’s body dying now, crying out to… _him_? Just to sleep, to recover, to regenerate all that has been lost, to be still and away and free…  


“Why don’t you get some rest, General.” Ren says in a gentle voice that surprises them both. “You obviously need it desperately.” Ren turns slowly to head back to his quarters.

Hux’s nose twitches and his hands ball into fists. 

“And who’s going to run this ship while I’m sleeping? Peavey? Mitaka? You?” Hux is all shivers as Ren disappears down the hallway.


	2. Chapter 2

Even with the vocoder, it had sounded so human, so soothing. 

“Why don’t you get some rest, General. You obviously need it desperately.”  
It was the reminder that Hux did not want to hear. And yet…

_Kriff it all_ , Hux thinks. He sits in his quarters in soft black pants and a grey undershirt. His nostrils are flaring, a cup of fresh caf balancing on his unsteady knee in his twitching hands. He typically goes to bed naked. There will be none of that tonight, even though his body is screaming, every muscle fiber wanting to wind down into oblivion. There is too much at stake. After the loss of Starkiller and most recently, one of their prized Dreadnoughts at the hands of those reprehensible Resistance scum, Hux cannot let things go, even for a second. He has already informed Snoke that they have tracked them via lightspeed into a nearby star system. It’s only a matter of time. If his body will cooperate, he can get his hands around it all and finally bring order to… everything. His eyes close for one blissful moment. He pries them open with sheer will. There is no time for this weakness. And then weakness decides to pay him a personal visit.

There is a knock at the door. The holopad on the wall blinks to life. Ren, K. 

_Kriff it all._

Hux doesn’t know why he opens the door. He just does. He lets Ren wordlessly glide past him and they stand facing each other in the center of the room. At least, Hux notes, Ren has taken a shower. His black curls are still damp. He has also changed into grey training pants and a ridiculous black cut-off t-shirt that leaves a two-inch stripe of muscled flesh visible above his waistband. 

Hux cringes. Why is he noticing these things right now? _How inappropriate._ He peels his eyes away from the ugly scarring on Ren’s left side and unfortunately looks right into his face. Black second-skin regeneration tape is keeping Ren’s face and chest together. Somehow the wound has done nothing to diminish the odd beauty of it all. Brown eyes always pooling with too much, that pouty mouth that seems to slick itself in tense situations when one should not be thinking about how slick it is, and those _ridiculous_ ears… 

Hux freezes. He cannot keep his mind straight. He’s losing it. It’s just a flood of inputs, with no filter, no control. _Keep it together, you’re a kriffing General of the First Order._ Hux straightens his back. If Ren has heard anything from his mind, he doesn’t show it. He is just standing, with his dark brow furrowed, examining Hux’s peaked face. 

“Have you come to taunt me then, Ren? In my own quarters? I’ll be back on the bridge in two hours, so please do wait awhile if you feel the need to destroy something on my ship…” Hux is abruptly cut off by a low sound from Ren’s throat. It’s not a laugh, but an incredulous _hmmph_. Hux narrows his eyes as Ren holds his gaze.

“What do you want, Ren?”

“I want to help you, General.” Hux steps forward to shriek out a response into Ren’s irritatingly beautiful face, but is stopped by a massive hand on his shoulder. Something in The Force sounds like a wshhhh and the cup of caf slips from his hand and drops to the floor. It breaks into pieces, shards and hot liquid. Hux slumps forward, boneless into Ren’s arms, his eyelids shutting out all possibilities except for this one, this one elusive and heavy thing that is, finally, sleep.

______________

Ren cannot help but smile on the way back to his quarters. Lifting the General into bed and pulling the covers over him was the most personal thing he’s done with and for another human in at least fifteen years. Hux’s mouth was slightly open and his red hair was falling into disarray over his forehead. Ren wanted to push it back. It was so unlike the General to look so peaceful and… And then he had stood suddenly by the bed, letting the feeling wash over him. The ugliness of it at first, and then the warming of his blood as he accepted the truth from The Force. It was always going to happen this way. He understood. He was only confused because he hadn’t realized it sooner.

He watched Hux sleep for half an hour before seeing himself out and notifying a maintenance droid that the shards and liquid presented an immediate threat to the General’s feet.  
Ren crept into his own bed and pulled the black covers around him. He sighed and waited. He wanted to be asleep at the same time as the General, as soon as possible, for as long as possible.  
_______________


	3. Chapter 3

It was Mitaka who came for him. He had been missing from the bridge for three hours before the higher officers had made an executive decision and drawn straws for the task. Lieutenant Mitaka had drawn the shortest straw and walked apprehensively to the General’s door. He waited a full two minutes before knocking, his ear to the door, waiting to hear any sign of life. He wanted – they had all wanted – for the General to be asleep for once. It was Mitaka’s lucky day.

He had waited outside the door while Hux brushed his teeth and stumbled over himself putting on his boots and uniform. When the General emerged from his quarters with not so much as a glance, Mitaka noticed a bit of color had returned to his cheeks and the horrendous bags under his eyes looked less like death and more like normal Hux. The scowl said everything and the General said nothing as they pounded their way to bridge.

As the viewport of the bridge appeared in front of them, something had escaped his lips, something that sounded like “Kylo Ren is a kriffing animal” but Mitaka had only acknowledged it with a knowing “Sir” and then resumed his place at his station.  
______________

General Organa was surely dead and the remaining Resistance ships were burning fuel, keeping their distance from the First Order’s fleet. The inevitable and pathetic destruction of this last band of rag-tag miscreants should have been enough to keep Hux’s blood burning bright. But something was all wrong.

He was seething under his uniform. Yes, he had slept. Slept soundly, floating in nothingness for hour after hour. His mind, buoyant and free, had knitted itself back together, its frayed seams somehow whole again. He only needed two cups of caf before the pinhole light of anger became an outright bomb under his skin, and he was stalking the hallways again to find Ren.

“You. What did you do to me?” Hux has cornered Ren in a conference room on besh level, his gloved finger in his face. The mask is nowhere in sight. The black regeneration tape is gone and Hux can see the pink edges of Ren’s wound fighting to stay together. All the bacta in the galaxy couldn’t heal what had been done to Ren, but Hux can only see the physical evidence in front of him. 

“You needed to sleep, General. You were killing yourself keeping awake like that. You needed my help.” Ren is so patient and logical in his answer that it sends Hux into an outright rage. He is babbling and cursing while Ren looks at him with those weepy brown eyes, a half smile tugged on his face. _Kriff, what is this look?_

“Keep your Force nonsense out of my head or you will be airlocked with the rest of the trash on this ship!” Hux spits into Ren’s face. His eyes are so close to Ren’s that he can no longer focus and he wants to bite off Ren’s bottom lip and perhaps an ear and pull his spine out through his neck. 

“Calm down, Hux. You needed it. You really needed it.”

“You have no idea what I need. And why…” His bottom lip quivers at this, self-consciously, “Why should you even care?”  
It’s so telling. And Ren just keeps looking at him with those watery eyes. Hux breaks away and begins to stalk out of the conference room, his fists balled up so tight the threads in his gloves almost give way.

“Sleep well. Hux.”

Ren makes sure he’s there just before the General’s head collides with the conference room floor. He places him on the table and pulls his greatcoat up around his chin. Ren notices the beginnings of a red beard appearing on his face and runs his index fingers under his cheekbones. The General’s eyelids flutter and his forehead releases into a complete state of bliss. Like a child, thinks Ren. But Ren is sure that Hux was just as relentless and cruel in his youth, and that this look is something that only he has ever seen this close or for that matter, ever. He feels a pang of guilt knowing that he was Force-connected to the scavenger Rey only a half-hour prior to this moment. He wants so badly to tell the sleeping General that he can now see a way for them to be rid of Snoke for good and that he only wants to be on his knees in the Throne Room of the Supremacy with his mouth pressed to the hand of the First Order’s flame-haired Supreme Leader. 

“I will show you,” he breathes. And he walks quietly to his quarters to sleep and dream in the same recycled air as General Hux.  
_________________

Hux knows very little of The Force. But he knows he is dreaming and dreaming so hard that his eyes can hardly stay in his head. In his bed, Ren is weaving his way into those closed off places that Hux keeps hidden, from everyone, from himself. They are together, somehow, in the red room. Hux can feel the stone beneath him, his legs crossed at the ankles, and Ren… Ren is on his knees, bent over with his head cradled in Hux’s lap. His fingers are endlessly kneading through Ren’s dark hair. Hux shivers on the conference table as Ren says the words, over and over.

Supreme Leader. 

Hux swallows in his sleep. _More._ And the edges blur into something that Ren has not yet thought to manifest. It’s not coming from him. _This is Hux’s dream._

The room solidifies from a liquid state into something so real and concrete that Ren has to sleep-check The Force to make sure it’s not really happening. He watches Hux from across a grand ballroom. Interplanetary dignitaries dance and mingle in robes of blue and purple, and a flash of white buckles his knees and takes away his breath. It’s Hux in the finest white uniform with stiff gold epaulettes on his shoulders and an etched gold crown encircling his temples. Impossibly beautiful Hux. **Emperor Hux.** Ren is slack-jawed against the pillow. _This has always been here. His blue eyes and red hair are just fire and **you, you are the moth**_ , something in The Force whispers. They stare at one another across this room. And then the distance is too great and Ren is running. _More._ Hux cries out and it echoes across the empty conference room. Ren hears it. _**More.**_ And Ren’s mouth is on his in an instant, hot and white, and the edges of Hux’s gold crown are crushed into his own temples. His hands immediately fly to his face as he is startled awake. _Ridiculous._ He sits up, scanning the room, dazed only for a few moments before putting on his greatcoat and punching the conference room holopad door sensor.

The sheets are thrown off. Ren stares up at the ceiling, aghast. He knows what Hux wants. All of it.


	4. Chapter 4

His day is going brilliantly. After the short cat nap in the conference room, of which no one except for Ren is aware, Hux returned to the bridge refreshed and alert. The bridge crew is relieved when he gives the order to fire on the Resistance medical frigate and they all bond briefly by watching it go up in flames and break into a million pieces, their smiles only tempered when Hux reminds them they still have a few more throats to crush before the scum are completely eradicated. 

Hux should be embarrassed by what happened in the conference room, but that part of his brain that kept him alive at the Academy is now in full control. The part that de-emphasizes what hurts the most and shoves it deep into a dark corner somewhere, never to be thought of again, that part serves him well, and it swallows up his weakness and anger and gets him through second shift.

He doesn’t see Ren again until late in the cycle, when he spies him pacing and stomping around in the corridor outside his quarters. He’s about to turn around and head the other direction when Ren spots him and covers the distance between them too quickly. Before Ren can shove him back into the wall, he experiences something strange. As if this has happened before. This moment, Ren covering a distance and moving toward him, in some other place and time, it’s just on the edge of emerging in his memory when Ren shoves a knee into his thigh and growls into ear.

“You will not distract me, General. I was doing you a favor, so you wouldn’t _die by your own will_ on this ship. I want to know how you did it. How did you take control of it?”

“What are you babbling about, Ren?” Hux hisses. “You’re the one who’s forced me into a useless stupor – twice! – and yet you accuse me of distracting you?”

Ren is confused by the response and waits panting in Hux’s face, waiting for some recognition to pass in his eyes before he lets him go. His eyes immediately go to the floor.

“What do you remember, General?” he mumbles.

“Not kriffing much, Ren! I was passed out asleep, remember?” Ren can’t bring his eyes up and Hux is utterly mystified by the content of the conversation.

“I think I’m all caught up on my rest now, so stay out of my head. I’m sure you want me to thank you for getting me back on track, but after everything that’s happened, I’m sure you understand why I refuse to offer you even a sliver of my gratitude.” 

Ren knows he’s referring to Starkiller and he finally looks up at him with those watery brown eyes. “Hux. I need to focus. I have a plan to get rid of the girl. And…”

Ren almost says it. _Outloud_. But he doesn’t. And he's confident that Hux doesn’t remember anything from the dream. 

Hux sneers. “Excellent. Keep your plan far away from me and the people on this ship who are trying to win a kriffing war. It sounds like you’ve got enough distractions to keep you busy, so don’t keep dragging me down with you.”

With that final remark, Hux retreats into his quarters. He doesn’t look back at Ren, who lingers in the hallway, now indeed distracted and gazing at the wall. Hux is not three steps into his room before he collapses face first onto the floor and begins to dream, deep and hard, about an island, a mirrored cave, and the distinct scent of bird shit on battered stone.

His crushed command cap falls away next to him as he jerks his searing head away from the fire. Ren is there. And so is the scavenger. Hux feels her - filthy and exhausted and like she’s spouted an endless stream of tears from her eyes for an entire lifetime. They talk in hushed voices but he can’t make out the words. It’s like watching a holofilm through a thick black veil. He is only aware now of the heat between them and some connection that feels like electricity but is _alive_ and he is livid that he doesn’t, cannot understand it. They are reaching out now, Ren and the girl, to touch hands, and Hux _feels_ her pupils dilate and that there is a promise made and the electricity is burning now, burning through him. _Stars, what is this burning?_ And it’s Hux. He knows this feeling. When the first-in-class Academy student gave her speech during graduation. When Snoke praised Ren for any trivial accomplishment, his wretched hand reaching out to his apprentice with approval. When his colleague in sniper service had outshone him in the last moments of their promotion trial. Envy. It was envy. Hux was jealous. Of the scavenger. And in that moment, Hux feels like he is someone else entirely, a much older man filled in his bones with a different sort of wisdom, storming toward the fire, toward those outstretched hands. And they are screaming, he is screaming onto the floor of his quarters.

He blinks. Once, twice, he blinks. And Hux knows he will remember this one, like he now remembers the one before, when Ren’s mouth was on his and he was burning, too.  
_________________________

Ren’s comm buzzes. _Cresh Supply Room. Now._

He has no way to explain it or to explain it away. He’s been waiting two hours for Hux to make up his mind. He’s felt it from across the ship. Indecision, denial, rage, cycling like that, until nothing. A kind of calm, like something being swept into a dark corner. And then it had started all over again. He knows that Hux knows now, about the dreams and how Ren can no longer control what he sees. There’s no way for him to explain how he could physically be with the girl and could have dragged Hux along with him to some distant planet. No way to explain that they, too, are now connected because Ren aches for him in his chest. And that it is all simultaneously real and true and yet not true, not really. Ren never minded living with these fuzzy edges, but for the General, this was going to be a problem. 

Ren’s comm buzzes again. _Now._

When Ren arrives on cresh level, he doesn’t even know where the supply room is located, but he feels Hux, a beacon of absolute seething bitterness, leading him down a distant hallway to a door that opens and shuts. Hux is there, in his perfect uniform, leaning against a supply crate, bubbling behind a mask of placidity. He waits and takes a deep breath and then another.

“I suppose you have no intention of trying to explain this… whatever this is, to me. It’s something to do with The Force and apparently I’m so unexceptional, I couldn’t begin to comprehend it.”  


Ren nods.

“Tell me right now…”

Ren’s eyes meet his. “Why I shouldn’t have you executed as a traitor.” It’s not what Ren wanted to hear, not right at first.

“It’s not something I can control. I can’t decide when I’m connected to her. I told you, it’s part of the plan.”

“Part of the plan to make me Supreme Leader and for you to be my lap dog?” Hux looks defiantly smug.

“Yes.” Ren says so quietly, Hux turns his head. Then he swallows hard. **Because he believes Kylo Ren.** And because he imagined this conversation devolving into screaming and open wounds faster.  


“And the dreams. Are they yours or mine?”

“Both.” Ren whispers. Hux looks at the floor. After a moment, he nods, as if he’s just decided to invade an entire planet.

“Ok. How much time have we got?”

“What?”

“Come to bed with me, Ren.” And Ren understands. He puts his massive hand on Hux’s shoulder and they collapse in a heap onto the floor of the supply room, asleep.  
__________________

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Absolute smut coming in Chapter 5! ;)


End file.
